The Steel Beneath the Silk: A Novel (Emma of Normandy, Book 3) (Unabridged‪)‬

The breathtaking conclusion to Bracewell’s Emma of Normandy Trilogy (Shadow on the Crown, The Price of Blood, The Steel Beneath the Silk), brimming with treachery, heartache, tenderness, and passion as the English queen confronts ambitious and traitorous councilors, invading armies, and the Danish king’s power-hungry concubine.

In the year 1012 England’s Norman-born Queen Emma has been 10 years wed to an aging, ruthless, haunted King Æthelred. The marriage is a bitterly unhappy one, between a queen who seeks to create her own sphere of influence within the court and a suspicious king who eyes her efforts with hostility and resentment. But royal discord shifts to grudging alliance when Cnut of Denmark, with the secret collusion of his English concubine Elgiva, invades England at the head of a massive viking army. Amid the chaos of war, Emma must outwit a fierce enemy whose goal is conquest and outmaneuver the cunning Elgiva, who threatens all those whom Emma loves.